An ordinary man engages the circumstances of daily life, seeking to draw closer to the Mystery who gives meaning to everything.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

God Wants To Create Me Anew

What is mercy? Mercy goes out to the one who is in need, and gives what is necessary. Mercy shines especially when it is gratuitous, when it is extended to someone who doesn't deserve it, or even to someone who is trying to resist it. Mercy is solidarity with the need of another; it is a love that calls out to the other in his solitude, that invites him to healing, that touches his solitude from within with the desire and the promise of freedom and transformation. Mercy is the origin, and the energy, and the fulfillment of hope.

God is Infinite Mercy.

And our relation to God is one of pure need. We depend on Him for our very existence; outside of God's creative and sustaining action, we are literally nothing. And each of us exists gratuitously. We exist as "gift," as continually receiving our being from God. So we are totally dependent on Him, but not as slaves, for He gives us to ourselves in such a way that we really belong to ourselves. Only inside of His gift do we find our true selves. Only God can create a person. Each of us is a mystery, existing by that creative power that is beyond anything we can understand.

Each of us is a work of Mercy.

The God who gives us being, out of nothingness, can bring new life to restore us from all the violence we have done to ourselves. He can create anew, overcoming the "voluntary nothingness" of our sins.

If I am a sinner, I must remember this. If I have willingly alienated myself from God by denying Him or doing violence to His wise and loving plan for the world and for the truth of the human person, I do not need to be broken and destroyed forever. I do not need to live in my self-made abyss of separation from God and from my own true identity.

God wants to create me anew. He has made the way, and His grace is already stirring up in me the desire and the hope for healing.

I can choose to wallow in my own abyss, or I can cry out to Him, I can beg Him that the mercy He has already given might take hold of me and change me. I can trust in Him. Trust reaches out to a Presence that I recognize. It adheres to that Presence, and follows Him. It surrenders itself to the ways of God's mercy and love. Trust never gives up.

If I trust in Him, He will really change me, He will give me a new heart, He will work miracles. There is no evil in me so great that He cannot heal, and He wants to awaken, change, and give me a new energy of love beyond anything I can imagine. I must trust in Him. I must adhere to Him. I must follow Him. He is Mercy.

On the Cross, He has revealed and given His Mercy, to me, to each one of us. And He remains with us in the Church, in the miracle of the sacraments, and in the faces of those people who have shown us that it is possible to be changed, to live in a new way.

I must go to Him in trust, to let Him heal me and transform me. I trust in Him to make me into the person He has created me to be.

"O blood and water, which have poured forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I trust in You."

love

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About Me

John Janaro is Associate Professor Emeritus of Theology at Christendom College. He is a Catholic theologian, and a writer, researcher, and lecturer on issues in religion and culture. His most recent book is NEVER GIVE UP: MY LIFE AND GOD'S MERCY. He is married to
Eileen Janaro and has five children.

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